Between Death and Mercy
by okiegal2005
Summary: Second chances are a rare gift, and even rarer are friends like these. Post Spiderman 3 movieverse AU.


The last thing Harry remembered was dying.

The angel that came to him when he opened his eyes and she touched his forehead, but he couldn't feel that. He could see the bright light behind her. Her blonde hair, blue eyes, peach lips…they looked exactly like…her. The way he remembered her, anyway. That had been a long time ago, and he had forgotten much about his mother, but never that she was beautiful. Still, it couldn't have been her. She wasn't dead, and she certainly wasn't an angel.

A smile tugged on his lips. "It's good to know I got into heaven," he said.

The angel smiled back at him, and then she started laughing. Harry wondered if his words really had been that funny, or if she just didn't hear many dead people tell jokes.

"No, not heaven," she said, and Harry gulped. So he had gone to hell. It was what he would have expected, if he had believed in an afterlife. "Not yet, anyway."

Not yet? Fighting words, for sure. Did that mean that he could climb out of hell, or that he wasn't in hell? Purgatory, maybe? That would have made sense. The angels – God – whoever was in charge here, was testing him. Well, he had finally made the correct choice in life after a series of bad ones…but this test was most likely much more difficult.

"You're lucky to be alive, that's for sure," she said.

Harry widened his eyes. Or, he would have, if he could have. His body was aching and exhausted. His mind was running way too fast.

"I'm alive?" He could hardly hear the words come out of his mouth they were so quiet.

"Yes, you are," the woman said.

Harry tried to have a look at his surroundings. Sure enough, there were no clouds or heavenly beings. Instead there was a television, a window, a bathroom…and he was lying down on a hospital bed. This woman was wearing green scrubs.

"So, you're not an angel?"

She laughed again, and started taking down numbers from the machines by his bed. "I'm flattered that was your first thought, but no. I'm just a nurse."

She looked even prettier to him now that he was fully awake. "I'm Harry, by the way."

She nodded at him. "I know," she said. "I'm Liz. I'm going to be your home care nurse."

Home care? He had only known of a few people who needed home care, and they all had one thing in common.

"Am I…dying?"

"No," she said, and by now she was done writing things down. "You had two long knives thrown into your back. One barely missed your heart. Few people would be able to survive something like that, especially with the amount of blood that you lost."

He remembered the moment he realized that the blades at the end of the glider had gone through him. At that point, he knew he was going to die, and while he was scared…he'd do it again if he had to.

"In fact," she continued, "your wounds have almost completely healed. I've never seen anything like this."

How strange, indeed. But it made sense. The injury to his head hardly left a scar, so the enhancer must have made him less vulnerable to things like injuries, at least in their physical nature. Harry knew what it was capable of doing to someone's mentality. How lucky was he not to have gone as insane as his father?

"Your friends are here," she said.

Thank God. "Where are they?" he asked when he noticed that he and Liz were still the only two people in the room.

"The waiting room," she said. "Visiting hours don't start for another fifteen minutes."

Liz started to leave the room when something struck Harry. "Hey nurse," he said, and Liz turned around. "When do I get to go home?"

She walked back to him and placed her hand on his. "I don't know," she said. "Hopefully by the end of the week. That is up to Doctor Li."

Harry understood that he was going to spend a lot more time in this room than he did last time, and the thought depressed him a little. _At least my friends are here,_ he thought.

--

Peter lied because he was afraid of the consequences. Sometimes, the price of making things right was too high. And if the cost of Harry learning the truth about him and finally learning to forgive him was his death, then it was too much to ask.

That's why his aunt May could never know. That's why Mary Jane found out by accident. That's why Harry only found out when he yanked the mask off right before he meant to kill him. He needed to keep his secrets. It was the only way to keep everyone safe.

He was holding Mary Jane's hand when Aunt May came up from behind him, touching his shoulder. He got up and they hugged, and a wave of relief washed through him. Somehow, Aunt May knew how to calm down every situation. This wasn't any different.

"Harry's going to be fine," he said.

Aunt May sat down beside him. "Well, thank the good Lord for that," she said. "What happened?"

Peter gulped, and went back to holding MJ's arm. He looked over at her, but she had no suggestions on what to say. Finally, Peter decided on something close to the truth. "Spider-Man was fighting a villain, and he was about to stab him. So Harry jumped in front of him, took the blade through his back."

Aunt May flinched at the story, and Peter realized that she cared for Harry, probably because he meant so much to Peter. Like she cared for Mary Jane. Aunt May was like that. She hardly had any enemies.

"A hero is what he is," Aunt May said. "The world could do with more people like that."

Peter nodded, and he definitely understood that Harry was making what he thought was a worthwhile sacrifice, but he couldn't help but feel angry with him. What if Harry had died? What would he have done then? He had already lost a father; he couldn't lose a brother, too.

But Harry had also lost a father. Perhaps he had been thinking the same thing.

He looked at his watch. It was five after eight, and visiting hours had begun. He nudged Mary Jane, and the three of them got up. But before they started walking, he turned toward them. "Can you give me five minutes with him?" he asked.

They both smiled and understood. "Exactly five minutes, Tiger," said Mary Jane.

He had planned on saying to Harry all the things that he had wanted to say before this happened, but he hadn't planned on Harry being awake, which he was.

When Harry saw him, he smiled, the way he had the last time he was in the hospital. Peter smiled back. Old times, again. He missed his friend.

"Hey, Buddy," Peter said.

"Pete," said Harry. Peter walked over to his friend's side. "So, the thing that…that did this to me…is he…?"

"Dead," said Peter simply. He didn't want to say anymore about that. Possibly, a year ago, he would have blamed himself for Eddie Brock's death. Now he understood that Eddie had made his own choice, and there was nothing he could have done about that.

In the past month, he had learned a lot about forgiveness, but when Harry had been stabbed, the rage was still there. For a moment, Peter had wanted to kill Eddie. But then he focused his rage on the symbiote, the poison. That was the true enemy. That was what had almost killed Harry. Peter had been determined to destroy it, quickly and efficiently, so he could help his best friend.

"I wanted to ask you; why'd you come?" Things were hopeless when Harry showed up to that battle. He had known that fighting was a lost cause but he didn't exactly have a choice. He prayed, right in the middle of his beating, that something would happen, that he would get to see Mary Jane one more time.

Harry started to shake his head. "When Bernard told me that you hadn't killed my father…I just let go of everything…all the hate that I had built up inside me." Peter noticed Harry's eyes – they were tearing up. "All I felt was pain and grief. Nothing to bury it with. And I saw you and Mary Jane and I remember thinking… 'What if they die? Am I just supposed to watch it happen?' That's when I left."

Peter felt his own tears. "For what it's worth," he said after a moment, "I'd die for you, too."


End file.
